Since you've started mixing/recording/mastering/etc, do you find it hard to appreciate music? not saying i'm even half-decent at any of the above, but after the past couple months i find it hard to listen to music and not listen for the production behind it. i'm not trying to whine or anything, but for you experienced folks, are you able to turn off the monitor ears and just enjoy it still?
I'm first and foremost a lover of music. I get to listen to music all day long in my job and I'd say I dig music more with each passing year. I certainly don't like it less. Actually, for many years I've observed that friends of mine that are 'audiophiles' seem unable to enjoy music that hasn't got all the boxes ticked. Me, I can listen to any old shit recorded anyhow on any crappy player and dig it. In a way, since getting into recording, it's all the more important that I enjoy my music still.
One thing I will say though, is that I can pick out certain things like if alot of compression was used on that snare or if that vocal or organ is distorted or if there are bad edits {the producer Norman Smith is a terrible culprit in this area !} and various bits and pieces that I never could before. Drums that I thought were authentic on some 90s R&B, I listen to now and I can hear that they're not live played drums. But none of that could prevent me loving stuff that I already love.
I listened to the production before I ever knew anything about recording. As a kid, I didn't know I was doing it, but looking back, I definitely was. I've always listened to elements of a song instead if just listening to the whole song. Like I'd focus on the just the bass, or just the kick drum pattern, or just the left guitar, etc. I'd listen to the same song over and over picking out each little thing. I still do it.
The Ramones first album is bass on the left, guitar on the right. I was the only guy around back in high school that caught that. Play with the balance and you could hear just Dee Dee, or just Johnny.
I think I'm pretty much the same. It was pretty much unconscious, in the same way that listening to the arrangement was unconscious.
I seem to have this ability to simultaneously listen to the whole song and break it down to it's parts. I like to call it 'mixed brain dominance'
. I put it down to when I was a kid, I listened to records on a all in one
record player that my Uncle built for us and a
cassette player that my Dad bought me. Neither had any bass response so when my Dad got his then state of the art '
music centre' (a fancy name for turntable, cassette and radio all in one !), I used to try and sneak listens of my stuff on it. And that was when I first noticed (I was 14) that records sounded very different on it to the sound of my mono cassette. I remember listening to Beatle stuff and the bass and drums came out of different speakers, the organ, other instruments and vocal were in different places and sound effects seemed able to travel from one speaker to the other. "Blue Jay way" really stands out in that respect. It was great fun just playing stuff out of one speaker. When I discovered The Pink Floyd's first two albums, I began to notice more little production tricks, but I'd notice them in an offhand way.
But you know, even before all this when I was 7 or thereabouts, I noticed some interesting things happened if you sped up or slowed down a record. Some things actually became clearer sped up. Some things disappeared almost, when slowed down.
<belch>
